Flying Fifteen rebuild.

[Typhoon]

A loooong while ago I bought this old girl as a complete package on a trailer, minus the keel. I am fundamentally stupid and have an urge to save old boats that are cosmetically challenged, but basically sound. I've also always had a long love of Flying fifteens and have owned one before. As soon as I saw this one, I knew it was mine.
I paid the princely sum of $40 for the whole lot, which I knew I could make ten times over just on the trailer if I pulled the pin on the project.


I parked the boat in the backyard and commenced a not terribly serious effort to look for a keel. I was in no rush and considering the Flying fifteen is a one design class, and was very popular here in Australia, I knew a keep would appear eventually.
Anyway, I got tired of looking at the boat and mowing grass around it, it was work on it or pass it on time. So I started running wanted ads on various online sites, which yeilded me a free keel (just had to pay shipping) after about three months.

[Typhoon]

I knew the deck had been very badly painted before I bought the boat, fairly obviously to hide a severely failing gelcoat. I also knew the hull had spent some time in fresh water with no antifouling and was badly oxidised, so the first thing I tackled was flipping the hull, cutting the gelcoat back with green scotchbrite pads and Jif cleaner, then a heavy compound buff and wax:


First area rough cut and a quick polish (so I knew if I was wasting my time or not):

Turned out, there was enough gelcoat on the hull to salvage an acceptable finish out of her:


The decks however, were another story....

[Typhoon]

Yes, the deck, where I find myself now.After turning the hull back upright, it was time to formulate a plan.
I pretty well knew the old getcoat had to come off in some areas, as trying to patch it here and there would be futile, especially with how lightly built the decks are on racing yachts of this kind:



Armed with a tool I dig out once every 5 or so years (and when I need it, it is the only tool to use), I dug into it with a 36 grit disc:

[Typhoon]

The deck gelcoat was doomed to fail from the day the boat was built. As I mentioned, the decks of these boats are very lightly built, and even new, they have quite a bit of bounce in them. The foredeck is more heavily built than the afterdeck, and has the benefit of more crown and a laminated egg crate structure behind it. You can sort of see where the deck cracked where the laminate was supported from behind, and the low spots in the egg crate structure:

The after deck is a different story. It has a layer of core under it that ends at the rudder post and it appears only a single layer of laminate either side of that. Being so flat, it has flexed a lot. The very hot summers and below freezing winters we get here ensured that once cracks started, the hot/ cold/ frost jacked the gelcoat off nicely. You can also see the gelcoat was doomed the day the boat was built. The darker parts of the laminate under where the cracks originate from look to me like they never bonded to the gelcoat during layup.
When I started sanding the after deck, flakes of gelcoat would be torn off by the sanding disc:

[Typhoon]

And where I am as of today. I have the fore and after decks sanded off, plus I have chased cracks on the side decks. Both side decks had a crack right over where the hull bonded to the deck due to years of flexing, and the starboard side deck had a huge complex of spider cracks emanating from an old impact and failure to carry the refinish of the repair over a large enough area. These things are relatively normal on 30 year old racing boats!
I have the boat covered with some black plastic, sweating out moisture that may have been trapped in the laminate:

It seems to be working well:

The plan is to knock the decks down with an orbital sander and 120 grit paper during the week, fair within reason with fumed silica and resin, sand again and laminate 200gsm surfboard cloth over the fore and after decks, plus the cracked areas of the side decks. I don't want to risk using a filler and just have the cracks reappear, plus by laminating a light cloth over the top with peel ply, I get an instantly very nice finish straight away that will need much less work.
The decks will never look perfect and fair due to how lightly built they are, but they will look much better than they do now, and the light cloth will help stiffen them a little, certainly more than the old gelcoat did!

[cape man]

Good looking boat. Looks like it will go!

[Jeff]

Glad to see the rebuild!!! Jeff

[boguesounder]

Bottom came out great! Enjoyed reading your post...especially the part about being fundamentally stupid when it comes to old boats. Seems many of us have that issue. Ha. Keep up the good work.

[Typhoon]

We have a public holiday this monday where I live, so I took the friday off beforehand. Makes for a great mini-break.
Got all my ducks in a row, taped up the foredeck, cut up some glass and peel ply, and got it done.
I was worried about working in direct sunlight, but it's only 21c here right now and I had some super slow hardener to work with as well. Still didn't stop me from working fast in case I got caught with my pants down!
Mixed up some fumed silica to a thick paste consistency and floated it into the low spots on the deck, then laid up the cloth directly over it when it was still wet. No bond issues there:

It'll still be a little wavy, but the goal was to do the majority of the coarse filling under the laminate so it was all stable and would leave much less final fairing. I also wanted to skim the fumed silica mix over the exposed old laminate, to help fill any of the larger pinholes and voids that may suck plain resin in and create a dry spot.
I rolled the cloth backwards to the rear of the boat after I had cut it out and used some tape to hold it there, so I could just roll it back out once I had the surface wet out. It worked great.I also overlapped the laminate mid deck for 6" and threw a strip of biax tape I had left over under that, to help stiffen the foredeck a little.

[Typhoon]

Thanks. The bottom looks great from afar, but is far from good! It's an old racing yacht, several laminate repairs with some average gelcoat matches and that sort of thing. Probably a 7/10 as it is. I do intend to go back and rework the bad gelcoat repairs after the decks are done.

Bottom came out great! Enjoyed reading your post...especially the part about being fundamentally stupid when it comes to old boats. Seems many of us have that issue. Ha. Keep up the good work.